Project Shoofly - New Server Leveling Project

So I think I've worked out why I'm not playing much WoW right now - I have no direction! Too many alts still need gearing up that I don't know where to start & not sure I have enough time before Mists of Pandaria hits anyway & when I do pick one, guildies sidetrack me or Facebook, or Twitter or any number of other bits I have going on.

So I've started a new little side project away from the madding crowds, on my US account. I know there's always some sort of leveling project going on but for me, this will be a whole new game - no heirlooms, no other high level alts, no professions already leveled - oh and horde-side!

Why Horde? - well, I've never played a horde character beyond level 20 so it should feel almost like a new game & I've often wondered just how much an ordinary non-AH player can easily make whilst leveling so I thought I'd give it a go.

I have just about 2 weeks before I wander off on a trip so here's the rules I have set for myself:-

• 2 horde alts - 1 to level, 1 as banker (seperate from any other gold making activities)
• no help from anyone unless I go through trade but I think most new players wouldn't do that anyway.
• As I don't know where any of the vendors are, I've switched off my Recipe Mate add-on, again, I'm not sure totally new players would have many add-ons
• only Auctionator add-on (no TSM or Auctioneer) for the Auction House
• no playing the Auction House on my banker, she is just there to sell stuff I pick up whilst leveling
• no rushing - I will just play as & when I feel like, with no special emphasis on gold-making
• most advice to newbies is 2 gathering professions so I'm choosing herbing & skinning

In my last post, I told you about my baby Alliance Hunter, well I haven't played her much, did a few battlegrounds but my twinking partner has been kinda busy so she's on hold for now - I didn't want to get too far ahead! But I have still been popping in now & again to the banker on Alliance side. Just a bit of low level herbs flipping, the vendor bought herbs & a few of the cooking recipes later & I have a princely sum of 457 gold already!

I'll probably keep going on her as well - it only takes a few minutes for each visit & if ever we do continue our twinking, at least I will have a bit of cash behind me :)

It will be interesting to see how different it is horde side & I wonder how far I will get before Mists of Pandaria is released? Had a challenge on Squidoo the other day to write a product-based lens so as everyone says 'write what you know', I wrote about Mists of Pandaria! I'm quite enjoying myself over there, I must admit but the whole SEO thing has me baffled. It's keeping me busy, that's for sure & makes a nice change from World of Warcraft end of expansion blues!

Yet Another Experiment! (or two)

It seems I'm not the only one out here who enjoys experiments in gold making! Syntalating has been running a major experiment on his server that makes for very, very interesting, edge-of-your-seat reading! I've linked to his latest post but he has links to the earlier posts that really need reading too. If you have ambitions to reset a market, I strongly advise you to grow your nails (more to chew on without getting blood everywhere!!) & gold balance first. I can't wait for the final instalment :)

Having raved about that, it makes my little foray into the world of low level glyphs seem like child's play & it is, to a certain extent. But I'm still finding it a challenge, even if the amounts of gold involved are comparatively tiny. Once my 30 day AH alt experiment finished, I had all this gold just sitting there so I started the next experiment.

The first morning I had managed to sell a few bits of stock overnight so my opening balance was 3697g. I managed to reset my MySales data so that it would show only the sales from this experiment going forward.

For the first 5 days, I concentrated on building up my ink & glyph supplies & just listing each glyph at the lowest market price at the time of listing. I manually searched for the highest priced glyphs & crafted those as a priority. I was only making 1 or 2 of each glyph, depending on herb/ink supply. My thinking was to have at least 1 glyph available in a variety of categories rather than 2 or 3 glyphs of the same. I also tried to spread my glyphs across all the different classes for the same reason. Basically a scattershot approach to see what hit & what missed :)

Day 6 dawned with an opening balance of 3814g - just 117g in 5 days - this was not going well although I now had 35 different glyphs listed & a few spare inks to replace them as they sold. By day 9 I had continued to buy herbs for ink & craft more glyphs but opening balance on day 9 was still only 3803g!

OMG! this was awful! I was only buying the very cheapest herbs (less than 3g per ink most of the time) but the average sale price was 15-20g per glyph if I was lucky. I decided to change my plan of attack & installed Trade Skill Master (thanks to Zoxy & Shamaenei for their excellent guides) even though my PC is slow enough already!

I also changed my listing behaviour. I had been listing for 48 hours & just leaving them there but now I'm listing for 24hrs & using TSM, I'm cancelling & reposting maybe 3 or 4 times a day (morning, late afternoon, early evening & last thing at night). I struggled a little with TSM at first as I had never used the earlier addons for glyphs but once I got to understand what it was doing, I could just fly through my little routine. When I log in, I empty mail ( ka-ching!), cancel auctions, scan for inscription only then repost. Simple as & only takes maybe 10 mins if I get sidetracked!

Results are good so far
day 10 o/bal 3763
day 11 o/bal 4009
day 12 o/bal 4219
day 13 o/bal 4282
day 14 o/bal 4565
day 15 o/bal 4709

Last 7 days, look at those prices!

So why does cancel/relist work for glyphs? I had a little think about it (not my strong point!) & came up with this thought - unlike raw mats, there is not enough demand for any one particular glyph that you can relist in the mid range & have the lower priced glyphs sell out while your listing is still active. I usually post my hypnotic dust mid range because I know the demand is there to sell through to my listing. By cancelling & relisting glyphs, I am usually the lowest priced for a little while & that means that if there is a single buyer for that glyph, I get the sale. Obviously then, the more often I can cancel/relist, the better my chances of selling.

That pretty much brings me up to date on this little experiment. Now you may think that the opening paragraph was only very loosely relevant to the rest of the post & just a way to plug a guy with gold blog but it wasn't! Syntalating's scroll/ore/mats experiment made me think about this lowbie end of the glyph market so I decided to try to reset a few of the glyph prices. I spent a whole 175g buying the very cheapest glyphs so that I could list as cheapest but at 60g+ rather than 20g!

I haven't logged in yet this morning but I'm going to continue this tactic for the next few days as well to see if it's possible on a server designated 'new players'. Wish me luck :-D

Arrrggghhhh! One of THOSE days!

I'm pretty new to this blogging lark. I'm enjoying it so far but I jumped in with a specific idea & no real plan for the future - although actually, that's pretty normal for me. So today, when I sat down to write a post, I got a bit stuck - so many good writers & blogs out there with so many topics covered already, where or how do I make mine that little bit different?

Well, I'm pretty new to this gold making lark so I figured I just need to write about what I'm learning, how I'm working things out & link to the various posts that inspire me to try different things or make me want to ask more questions on a subject.

I've already started keeping notes for prospecting (see my Obsidium Prospecting post), milling & disenchanting with a view to sharing my findings. I've also been questing with a Potion of Treasure Finding active to see how that affects loot drops & keeping a gold tally while I'm questing from 83-85, just to see how much accumulates without being noticed.

So I guess what I'm trying to get at, is - are there any little experiments you run for yourself that I could try or other random ideas that you haven't got around to or can't be bothered with? Have you done a blog post that you think I could follow up & link to?

Let me know what you think so far - I love receiving comments (as do all bloggers I'm sure), they let me know that I'm not talking to myself!